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Johnnie Walker unveiled its limited-edition Jane Walker Black Scotch to controversy that the marketing campaign was patronizing to women.Diageo

Disclosure: Diageo has hosted me on at least one press junket.

I’ve called myself a feminist for literally as long as I can remember. I marched for abortion rights at around age 10, I’m vocal about the dire need for parity in all aspects of society, and I volunteer as a leader in various organizations to advance women. Yet the controversial, female-forward Jane Walker edition of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch, set to launch with a woman replacing the man on the bottle for a limited nationwide run in March, doesn’t offend me.

While I appreciate the media and internet outcry against what many perceive as pandering or patronizing — and while I myself have written articles against “pinking-and-shrinking” products, including whisky, to appeal to little ladies of delicate constitution — I think the outrage here is misplaced. Instead of excoriating Johnnie Walker’s parent company, Diageo, we should commend its effort, which includes psychological and financial components that push women to “keep walking” — as the whisky’s marketing slogan instructs — toward total empowerment.

Here’s why.

(Photographer: Udit Kulshrestha/Bloomberg)

Gender Splitting

First, let’s get something out of the way. Yes, retailers can alienate the very market they’re courting when they gear non-sex-specific products to women. Ask any expert on the female consumer, and she’ll tell you that modern women want respect for forming opinions the same way men do and that we don’t appreciate the notion that we need a smaller or weaker version of anything to find it palatable.

But here’s the thing: Ostensibly, Johnnie Walker introduced Jane entirely to celebrate women and urge us onward as we continue the long march toward equality. The official messaging says zero about selling this product to women as opposed to men. That crucial point has gotten lost because, pitiably, Johnnie Walker vice president Stephanie Jacoby screwed up in an interview with Bloomberg that ran Monday.

Jacoby inserted gender division into the proverbial conversation by saying: “Scotch as a category is seen as particularly intimidating by women. It’s a really exciting opportunity to invite women into the brand.”

(Photographer:Jay LaPrete/Bloomberg News)

If the Jane campaign risked ruffling a few feelings before, Jacoby's statement poked at a beleaguered population that’s ready to roar at every slight, both real and imagined. We can and do hold the company accountable, as the vice president speaks on its behalf. But she accidentally said something stupid, and I’d like some of this anger to abate. Her haters might do better to support their own when she’s on the same side of the issue and cut some slack to the corporation that hired her to such a high-ranking position in the first place.

The Liquid Remains The Same

Many of the complaints I’ve read mistakenly assume Johnnie Walker dumbed down the liquid. It didn’t. This is the same full-flavored hooch poured into a different bottle. This is not insipid and mercifully defunct Chick Beer; it’s not gender-normative pink Legos; it’s not mini-me Bic For Her. And it’s definitely not this month’s marketing disaster that compelled a PepsiCo spokesperson to deny her (female) CEO’s reported comments that Frito-Lay was developing less crunchy and less messy Doritos to cater to women, who “don't like to crunch too loudly in public and … don't lick their fingers generously.”

Despite my strong belief that Frito-Lay must have spent millions of dollars on market research that discovered precisely what PepsiCo’s CEO said — that women don’t like to crunch loudly or vociferously suck orange powder off their fingers in public — the optics made the company look patronizing, hence, insulting.

We feel like Jacoby was mansplaining, don’t we, when we hear her say that whisky intimidates women and that we might feel more comfortable buying a bottle with a pretty picture we can relate to. Infuriated and just so damn sick of it all already, some critics are raging against the distillery for so bluntly and inaccurately homogenizing and diminishing us and assuming that we simply need a kinder, gentler picture – or one that blatantly begs for our attention – to convert. As a reality check, my fellow FORBES contributor Brian Freedman writes in his own review of the campaign that women represent around one-third of whisky drinkers.

Truthfully, those gender-based conversations probably did take place as execs discussed the program. If they didn’t consider all angles, particularly as they pertain to sales, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs. No one should pretend we’re not being profiled every time we enter a store, turn on the TV or send a tweet. Companies spend billions of dollars to splice us into single DNA strands in order to play the music, time the commercials and run the sponsored content that target every one of our X chromosomes. Jacoby just made the mistake of admitting it.

Walking Into The Frame

The original logo.Diageo

Let’s examine the image itself. Jane looks just like Johnnie – same pose, same clothes, same walking stick. She’s shapely but not sexual. She looks like she knows where she’s going, and I think the image adequately represents Johnnie Walker’s stated objectives: “In recognition of women who lead the way, we are unveiling Jane Walker, the first-ever female iteration of the brand’s iconic Striding Man logo. Jane Walker is the celebration of the many achievements of women and a symbol of empowerment for all those on the journey towards progress in gender equality.”

Bridget Brennan, CEO of the female-focused consulting firm Female Factor, writes that marketers should avoid making the following visual mistakes when advertising to women: overplaying female stereotypes (like overusing the color pink or depicting red high-heels), portraying women as passive observers, showing women exclusively in couples or in family situations, and leaving women out of the picture entirely.

Jane Walker does none of that. She’s black and white, just like her male counterpart; she’s striding purposefully forward; she’s alone; and she’s very much present.

Melissa Allen, who heads the design firm MAD Creative, based in Washington, D.C., agrees the mark contains all the right brush strokes.

“I don’t find it offensive,” she emails, adding that she applauds Diageo for keeping the bottle, packaging and most of the branding the same as Johnnie’s, letting the gender switch serve as the main focus. “It says woman can be a whiskey icon for ALL, just like women can make and star in movies for all and write literature for all. It says maybe even women’s issues are everyone’s issues, which seems to be their point.”

Gimmickry Or Authenticity?

“The Jane Walker symbol is not merely a marketing ploy,” VinePair editor Catherine Wolinski writes in a story posted Monday.

When I ask what makes her so sure, she replies, “I don't believe Johnnie Walker is simply slapping a woman's image on Black Label to sell more bottles during Women's Month (although, it certainly won't hurt).”

Emma Walker, a whisky specialist and blender at Diageo, testing the aroma of a whisky in the Spirit Mastery Room in the Diageo technical center near Stirling, Scotland, in 2016. (Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg)

Not only is Johnnie Walker donating $1 from each bottle produced to two women’s causes — for a total of $250,000 to the Monumental Women nonprofit, to erect a statue of suffragettes in Central Park, and to the She Should Run organization, to boost women seeking election to public office — the distillery seems to actively work toward gender parity in the workplace. According to a statement, women make up nearly half of its 12 blenders – something Wolinski notes is “progressive compared to other producers.”

Further, women will hold 50% of Diageo’s board seats come April, 40% of its global executive team is female (including the president of Diageo North America, as well as the global chief marketing officer and chief financial officer), and starting now, it will give preference to ad agencies that can prove some top female leadership.

“What's not progressive about that?” Wolinski asks.

Well, this — this is what some of my closest whisky-drinking female friends say isn’t progressive about that:

“I’d be more impressed with them if they had the campaign based on sales of ALL Johnnie Walker products,” texts my friend Joy Kennedy. And: “Let’s not make it so some of the artists have to be women but all the welders get to be male.”

Commenting on Facebook, Herlinda Heras jokes, “Maybe they should make all the women’s versions 30% cheaper since we earn less than men!”

Fair points, even in jest.

But I believe it’s progressive for the largest alcohol producer in the world (Diageo) to take a pro-woman stand and to do it through the best-selling whisky in the world. That puts a lot at stake. Because even though women’s lib, as the activists of the 1960s called it, shouldn’t be a political issue, it is.

In this sickeningly partisan decade, women’s advocacy represents a liberal issue and exposes Diageo to attacks and possibly boycotts from those who disapprove of its aim to expand female representation on boards, in distilleries and in city parks. Execs who approved this program probably expected a bit of pushback … but not from those who work the same side of the same cause.

I call this a courageous move for Diageo and a foolish one for extremists who can’t stop getting in their own way.

The postponement line at the Diageo International Supply Center and Technical Center in Singapore in 2015. (Photographer: Nicky Loh/Bloomberg)

All That Glimmers Might Be Gold

A fan of strongly peated Scotches, inarguably the most “intimidating” of whiskies, Strickland calls the new imagery “cute” and says she’d consider buying a bottle of the Jane’s edition if only she liked the taste of Johnnie Walker Black better.

Kerry Caldwell, a former distiller and current quality control manager at Idaho’s Mother Earth Brewing, says she’d “definitely” buy a bottle of Janie over Johnnie.

“I'd buy it for fun,” she emails, “because as a Scotch drinker, Johnnie Walker just isn't my favorite brand but having a limited-edition bottle with a classy woman-centric label on my bar cart would be great!”

I won’t dispute that. Jane’s strong, semi-sexy picture resonates with me. Just as a purse or pair of sneakers in my favorite color pulls me in for a closer look when I spot one for sale, I’d probably stop to get a better look at Jane on a liquor-store shelf. Although I wouldn’t drop $34 to buy the 750-milliliter container as a collector’s item, if I did, I’m pretty sure I’d showcase it alongside my favorite bottles, cans and steins. I suspect Jane might even motivate me to push through minor moments of professional self-doubt or remind me to fist-bump myself when I achieve a milestone.

I know that sounds like B.S.

It’s not.

The postponement line in Singapore. (Photographer: Nicky Loh/Bloomberg)

Judging A Book By Its Color

Let’s imagine for a minute that Jane is just a gimmick. That instead of taking the time to sell to women as we like to be sold to – with education and on a personal basis – Diageo slapped up a drawing of a woman in time for Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, both of which get mentioned in the press release for the rebranded product. Agree with that explanation or not — and I don’t — the reality is that to sell is to exploit psychology.

Jackie Cusack, who sells spirits for Pennsylvania’s Eight Oaks Craft Distillers, says: “I really want to believe that gender norms don't play a role in good packaging. But even at Eight Oaks, I think subconsciously it does. Whiskeys are always darker packaging. Applejack is red, gin green, rum blue and vodka a light brown. I have observed women buying Eight Oaks because it’s a cute bottle.”

My 5-year-old tom-boy self didn’t consciously choose magenta as a favorite color, but here I am decades later oohing and ahhing over every piece of retail garbage fashioned in the hue that society designates as a symbol of femininity. I’m not saying every girl or woman prefers pink or even likes it, or that every woman will gravitate toward an image of something she resembles or aspires to. I am saying that human nature attracts us to things we can relate to — like attracts like — so we should appreciate when those images are positive ones.

Communities of color have long clamored to see themselves on TV and in advertising, lest their children fail to identify with positive role models. Women have begged for portrayals that don’t sexualize or objectify us. Through Jane Walker, Diageo is not only giving women exactly what we’ve asked for but is also devoting part of its long-term “Keep Walking” strategy to cheering the diversity of America via ad campaigns, donations and events that embrace veterans and Hispanics. Sadly, that, too, has become political.

Is it pandering? Having not sat in on the meetings, I can say only that I don’t think so.

Does it bring visibility and encouragement to communities that sometimes feel invisible to the mainstream? With certainty I say yes. I also say that it can’t get here fast enough.